Beto Lost but His Gun Grab Agenda Didn't

Remember when Beto O'Rourke told America he was coming for your AR-15? He lost, but the confiscation agenda didn't — it just got repackaged with softer language and new faces. Jeff breaks down why Beto 2.0 is more dangerous than the original and what every gun owner needs to do about it right now.

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0:15

Welcome to the Live Shoot podcast. I'm Jeff Dowdle, and I've been a licensed firearm dealer for the last 18 years. In this podcast, we talk about all things related to Second Amendment, anything else going on in the world, sports story, or anything else I find interesting. So welcome, welcome, welcome. So as we're getting ready for the, uh, midterms, we've got primaries going underway, I just wanted to take you down a little trip down memory lane, and I promise you it's relevant to everything that's happening right now because some bad i- bad ideas just don't stay dead. They keep coming back. Sometimes wearing a different face, sometimes with a different name, but it's the same playbook, and that's exactly what we're seeing today. So now if you, if you're from Texas for sure, but even across the country, um, and you've been around the Second Amendment world for any length of time, you remember Beto O'Rourke, Robert Francis O'Rourke, if we're being formal about it. A guy from El Paso, from Texas, who ran for Senate against Ted Cruz back in 2018. He got close, didn't win, but c- became a media darling overnight, and then he decided to run for president in 2020, and that's when he gave us one of the most memorable, and honestly, one of the most alarming moments in modern gun control history. Standing on the debate stage, he looked into the camera and said, quote, "Hell yes, we're gonna take your AR 15, your AK 47," end quote. No hedging, no beating around the bush, just flat out confiscation. And you know what? I actually appreciate the honesty in a twisted sort of way because most anti-gun politicians, they dance around it. They talk about common sense. They talk about reasonable restrictions. But Beto just said the quiet part out loud. He told you exactly what the goal was, take your guns. Now, that didn't work out too well for him. His presidential campaign fiz- fizzled. He came back and ran for governor of Texas against Greg Abbott in 2022, and he got beat again pretty badly. And most people figured, all right, Beto's done. He's a footnote. We can move on. So here's where it gets interesting because the spirit of Beto is alive and well, and I'm not necessarily talking about the man himself. I'm talking about the ideology, ide- ideology, the approach, the willingness to stand up openly for confiscation, for bans, for stripping law-abiding citizens of their constitutional right. That's what I mean by Beto 2.0, and we're seeing it pop up in new places with new faces. There are candidates and politicians right now who are running on aggressive gun control platforms that have been considered politically s- political suicide just 10 or 15 years ago. Mandatory buybacks, which, let me be straight with you, is just a polite way of saying confiscation with a check s- s- attached. Assault weapon bans that define assault weapons so broadly that half of firearms in America would qualify. Universal registration schemes, red flag laws with almost no due process protections, magazine capacities, you name it So what does that mean for you? It means complacency is not an option. See, the danger of beating somebody like Beto at the ballot box is that people relax. They think, "Well, we won the fight." But the fight didn't end. It just moved. It shifted to a different state, different races, different legislative bodies, and the people pushing those ideas learned from Beto's mistakes. They're not always gonna be as loud and obvious about it. Some of them are packaging the same confiscation agenda in softer language. They'll call it a safety initiative. They'll call it violence pre- pre- prevention. But when you read the actual text of what they're proposing, it's the same thing. It's Beto 2.0. Now, there's also a broader point here, what-- that people are, are worth making. Every time one of these candidates or proposals surface, it's a reminder of why the Second Amendment exists in the first place. The founders didn't write the Second Amendment because they were worried about hunting. They wrote it because they understand that a citizenry, an armed citizenry, in fact, is the final check on government overreach. And when politicians stands up and says they want to take your firearms, they're proving the founders right. They're demonstrating exactly the kind of government behavior that the Second Amendment was designed to protect against. Think about it. So what do we do about it? First, we have to stay informed. Know who's running in your local elections, your state elections, your federal races. Don't just pay attention to the presidential race every four years. The people who are going to chip away at your rights are often doing it at the state and local level where nobody's watching. School boards, city council, state legislatures. There's where-- this is where a lot of difference, uh, uh, takes place, and this is where a lot of this stuff starts. Second, support organizations that are fighting, um, these battles in courts and legislatures, whether that's the NRA, Gun Owners of America, the Second Amendment Foundation, your state level organizations. These local fights cost money, and they take time, and they need our support. Third, talk to people, not just people who already agree with you. Talk to your neighbors, your coworkers, your family members who maybe don't own guns and don't understand why this matters, because this isn't just about guns. It's about whether the government can strip you of a constitutional right because it's politically convenient. Today it's the Second Amendment, tomorrow it will be the First or the Fourth. The principle is the same. And here's the bottom line: Beto lost. But the idea that government should be able to confiscate your legally owned firearms did not lose. It's still out there. It's still being pushed, and it will keep being pushed until we make it absolutely clear that the answer is always will be no. So if you find this valuable, do what I said. Share this with people. We gotta keep getting the word out. We gotta keep fighting. Um, give it five stars. Help me with algorithm. We need more people saying, paying attention to this stuff, not fewer. I appreciate you listening, appreciate you sharing, appreciate anything y'all do. I'm Jeff Dowdle. This is the Live to Shoot, uh, Podcast. Stay informed, stay armed, and never stop fighting. I'll talk to you next week.